Open container, often used to hold cut flowers
A
vase
(
or
) is an open container. It can be made from a number of materials, such as
ceramics
,
glass
, non-
rusting
metals
, such as
aluminium
,
brass
,
bronze
, or
stainless steel
. Even
wood
has been used to make vases, either by using tree species that naturally resist
rot
, such as
teak
, or by applying a protective coating to conventional wood or plastic. Vases are often
decorated
, and they are often used to hold
cut flowers
. Vases come in different sizes to support whatever
flower
is being held or kept in place.
Vases generally share a similar shape. The foot or the base may be bulbous, flat,
carinate
,
[1]
or another shape. The body forms the main portion of the piece. Some vases have a shoulder, where the body curves inward, a neck, which gives height, and a lip, where the vase flares back out at the top. Some vases are also given handles.
Various styles and types of vases have been developed around the world in different time periods, such as
Chinese ceramics
and
Native American pottery
. In the
pottery of ancient Greece
"vase-painting" is the traditional term covering the famous fine painted pottery, often with many figures in scenes from
Greek mythology
. Such pieces may be referred to as vases regardless of their shape; most were in fact used for holding or serving liquids, and many would more naturally be called cups, jugs and so on. In 2003,
Grayson Perry
won the
Turner Prize
for his ceramics, typically in vase form.
History
[
edit
]
There is a long history of the form and function of the vase in nearly all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are the only artistic evidence left from vanished cultures. In the beginning stages of
pottery
, the
coiling
method of building was the most utilized technique to make
pottery
. The coiling method is the act of working the clay into long cylindrical strips that later become smooth walls.
Potter's wheel
[
edit
]
The
potter's wheel
was probably invented in
Mesopotamia
by the 4th millennium BCE, but spread across nearly all Eurasia and much of Africa, though it remained unknown in the
New World
until the arrival of
Europeans
.
[2]
The earliest discovery of the origins of the potter's wheel was in southern Iraq. The discovery of this technique was beneficial to the people of south Iraq because it served as a substitute for their previous inefficient traditions. Upon this new technique, it would then grow gradually and even be adopted for the use of decorating pottery.
[3]
Garden vase
[
edit
]
Garden vases are usually V-shaped but they can also be
cylindrical
or bowl-shaped. They are usually made of
ceramic
or, today,
plastic
. Examples are the
Torlonia Vase
[4]
and the
Medici Vase
in the
Uffizi Gallery
in
Florence
.
[5]
Shapes
[
edit
]
Ancient Greece:
Chinese:
Modern:
Gallery
[
edit
]
Material types
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Emmanuel Cooper. 2000.
Ten Thousand Years of Pottery
, fourth edition,
University of Pennsylvania Press
,
ISBN
0-8122-3554-1
,
ISBN
978-0-8122-3554-8
, 352 pages
- ^
"Moorey, Peter Roger Stuart (1994)".
Ancient Mesopotamian Material's and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence. P. 146
.
- ^
Bryant, Victor.
"The Origins of the Potter's Wheel"
.
Ceramics Today
. Retrieved
August 14,
2017
.
- ^
"Museo Torlonia".
Inv. 174. Luca Leoncini, "The Torlonia Vase: History and Visual Records from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 54 (1991:99?116)
.
- ^
"Several 17th and 18th-century variants are illustrated in John Goldsmith Phillips".
"The Choisy-Menars Vases" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, 25.6 (February 1967:242?250)
.
External links
[
edit
]
Media related to
Vases
at Wikimedia Commons